PS. When reading Eric's first post here - I got a sence of that the fastest Intel CPU's are very disliked amongst the SETI developers. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're worng.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Mate, you really have got a serious problem.
Whether you decide to leave or stay i reckon you need to just get away for a few weeks & get some perspective & take a good long hard look at things from the outside.
Leave your systems running, take them off line. Whatever you do just get away from the forums & everything else for a while & if you do decide to come back you can at least do so with a fresh outlook on things.
Just get a grip before you loose it completely.

I do indeed have a serious problem. I will try to keep this civil, unlike your personal attack on my views. I have just as much of a right to post my viewpoint as you do. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT I SHOULD NOT POST MY VIEWS??? It seems to me that this server is in AMERICA. And here in AMERICA, we have something called the FIRST AMENDMENT, which is the RIGHT to FREE SPEECH.

The other serious problem I have is with those like yourself who can never know what it is like to lose more RAC on ONE MACHINE that your total RAC. By simply switching to enhanced on ONE machine, it's RAC was still climbing at that point, went from about 1850 down to it's current 1408, and still falling. There are many others that are afflicted by this, and are just as unhappy as I am.

Regards, Daniel.

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I will try to keep this civil, unlike your personal attack on my views. I have just as much of a right to post my viewpoint as you do. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT I SHOULD NOT POST MY VIEWS??? It seems to me that this server is in AMERICA. And here in AMERICA, we have something called the FIRST AMENDMENT, which is the RIGHT to FREE SPEECH.

It's not about free speech, nor am i attacking your views.
It's about perspective.
The fact that you are so worked up over the whole thing, belittling the efforts of those that don't have access to lots of machines or money to buy them & run them, & continue to go on & on & on over the same points, ignoring the responses when they address those points shows you have no perspective on the situation at all.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Daniel, It's probably as tough for you to watch your rac fall as it was for those of us sticking with NON optimized Boinc core clients to watch ours stay the same as yours (and others) rose with artificially inflated claimed credits. You/others will still keep their credits and thus still be further ahead. I'm sitting here with 5 computers (two amd 64 3700's) and the best RAC I can muster is 1200 for all boinc projects. It's always been in that area. Yet you claim to get a RAC of 3500 from ONE computer.

In the current system advantage will be had by having more and faster computers. Guess what? You'll still have the advantage, just the numbers will be different.

I appreciate the help you've given me in the past and hope this doesn't cause a rift between us, but I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for you.

tony

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Daniel, It's probably as tough for you to watch your rac fall as it was for those of us sticking with NON optimized Boinc core clients to watch ours stay the same as yours (and others) rose with artificially inflated claimed credits.

As i mentioned in an earlier post- i think the real problem is the fixation with RAC. Looking at Daniel's stats i can't see any problem.

Over the last month the amount of credit earnt has remained pretty much constant, the only dip (like everyone else) being as a result of today's outage. Looking at the monthly chart you can see that the credit per month has actually increased over the last couple of months, and considering we're only 2/3 of the way though this month it should be almost the same for this one as well.
And looking at the daily graph there is a very slight dropping off of credit per day, but that is only due to a peak on the 9th of this month combined with today's outage (which will rectify itself as results are reported. Either a normal day today or a big blip tomorrow).

In short, there will be a slight reduction in credit per day- but it is only a slight reduction. Not the massive horrendous wholesale slaughter of credit that Daniel (and others) have been protesting about.



Maybe if the RAC formula were tweaked they would all be happy again? A massive stupendous RAC, but the actual credits would still be the same....

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Grant
Darwin NT

The other serious problem I have is with those like yourself who can never know what it is like to lose more RAC on ONE MACHINE that your total RAC. By simply switching to enhanced on ONE machine, it's RAC was still climbing at that point, went from about 1850 down to it's current 1408, and still falling. There are many others that are afflicted by this, and are just as unhappy as I am.

I believe it has been stated that only 1% of the Boinc/Seti members even read these forums. It could also be argued that only 1% of the Boinc/SEti members actually use the optimized applications as the other 99% don't even know of it's existance. You and I are in that 1%. The vast majority of the Boinc users install the software and go about there lives without giving it another thought. Boinc developers are NOT going to do anything that will allienate 99% of the members in order to please that 1%. It is as simple as that.

Whatever it is that you want is not going to happen because you sir are in the minority. You should be happy in the thought that you were able to gain such a large advantage over 99% of your fellow crunchers and still remain legal. Now that the Boinc/Seti-Enhanced software has been optimized, by the same folks, there is little advantage to be gained in the use of optimized applications

I know how you feel. I have watched my RAC drop from 6500 one week ago to it's present value. It does not bother me in any way though because I know that the same has happened to everyone else who used the optimized applications. I don't complain because I know that the RAC of 6500 was also artificially enhanced with the optimized software. The playing field is now leveled and we go on........

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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

Daniel,
I don't know where you get this idea that many are affected by the granting of the real value of credits. I appreciate you are in the top 20 participants, but if this household which runs three separate accounts, where to combine forces and only crunch for Seti, with only our top computers, our rac using 4.18 would have been over 5,000, which would put us in the top 300, easily if the other 4 old computers were added.

I don't consider our computers, equals a farm, its a family. I also suspect that at least half of those in the top 200 participants are using computers to which they have access and permission to use from their places of employment. So these are not really in the same position as you are.

Therefore we are talking about maybe 100 participants. Not a lot even if we only consider active particpants, it may equal one in two thousand.

The Seti personnel don't have any real choice on the credits they allocate per time to a host. That was decided by the original BOINC/Seti setup using standard client and app. Any other value can only bring competion between the projects and that will not be tolerated, by management or the users.

It is all very clear on the projects other that Seti that there is at least resentment against users of optimised clients who over claim, especially on Rosetta where the validation of the result is done post granting of credit.

We have been using optimised apps will all see a drop in out RAC proportional to the speed of our computers. The only way you will see your climb up the BOINC (not Seti) ladder slow down is if you compare yourself to a simarly dedicated cruncher for another project, with the possible exception of Eistein crunchers who have a brilliant optimised app available, but the life of that is limited, probably to the end of the S4 project, and that is due to end in about a month.

Andy

The whole problem here was really due to the Trux calibrating client.

As I understand it, previously, credit was granted more based on time spent cruncing rather than how many wus you did per day. The thing that trux did was artificially inflate the credits claimed so that every wu crunched, no matter how fast or slow, was normalized to credit based on 32.x cobblestones for the standard unit. This allowed fast computers to claim much more credit per hour than non trux or non-optimized computers, and greatly inflated the claimed credit, which in turn raised the granted credit.

When I first heard about the Trux Calibrating Client, I though it was basically cheating . However, since it was openly discussed on the boards here, appeard to be in widespread use, was available equally to anyone who chose to use it and Berkeley was silent on the issue, I took that silence as tacit approval so after a while I decided to use Trux myself and recommend it to my teammates.

Now, everyone gets the same credit for wus. Faster machines complete wus faster, and with optimized clients even moreso. Everyone is on a completely even playing field, not only within seti@home, but among other projects running on boinc.

The credit thing to me is a complete non-issue. I've spent money on fast machines too, and had 3 in the top 20 computers list with a 4th rising, and the opinions of some seti crunchers here just looking for continued inflated rac do not represent me. I'm happy with the new credit system, and it's as fair as it can be made all around.

I applaud the project developers for finding a way to put everyone on a fair playing field.

Xaak
Proud member of BroadbandReports.com Team Starfire

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XaaK

Eric,

Thanks for your post. After reading it I have to admit that perhaps I have become jaded in my feelings. I appreciate your forthright manner and I accept your assurances.

I admit I allowed the posts of a few here to skew my perceptions of the project. There are some here who dominate the boards and like to invite people to quit at every opportunity. They act as if they speak for the project and I allowed myself to almost believe they have some special insight, which they obviously do not.

I will continue to crunch Seti@Home as I've done for several years now and I agree the credit flap is much ado about nothing. My only concern regarding credit, is that those people that crunch wus that require much longer completion times because of AR are equitably granted higher credits.

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Proud member of Team Starfire World BOINC

@Zaak

Hmmm - didn't know about any Trux calibrating thing.
So I guess, that I have only been 'cheating' moderately - with an optimized 4.11 and 4.45 Boinc-client ;-)

You can help me to understand this 'Trux thing' by telling me the exact specs (if they are OC or not) of your 2 Pentium4 3Ghz host - so I can compare these with my own P4's (2,8 - 3,2 and 3,4Ghz).

Each of your two P4 3Ghz is having almost double RAC than my Prescott 3,2@3,7Ghz (s.478) and mine is cruncing WU's at 100% 24/7.
(and crunching a 4.18 reference WU in 4311 seconds as seen here (rated second): reference WU

Kiva

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Greetings from Norway

Crunch3er & AK-V8 Inside

Quote from the Gas Giant:

SETI is not being fair to the other BOINC projects. Neither is Einstein. Neither is Rosetta. Neither is QMC. Neither is any other project that allows more credit to be claimed and granted than is defined by a typical BOINC install.

Seti WAS not being fair. It is fairer now.

I for one considered not crunching for Rosetta precisely because there is no control over the claimed credit. I'm sure that many people refuse to participate in important science for exactly that reason. However, I consider that the science being done is far more important than my petty disagreement with their credit policy. So, I still crunch for Rosetta, QMC and Einstein despite my disagreement with their policies.

I will also admit to using an optimized app and optimized client setting only for Einstein because the project developers have specifically stated that they do not consider it improper. I consider it improper to use an optimized client but I'll go along with the majority - and I enjoy getting a few more credits. But I'm not going to pitch a fit if they decide to take that advantage away.

@Zaak

Hmmm - didn't know about any Trux calibrating thing.
So I guess, that I have only been 'cheating' moderately - with an optimized 4.11 and 4.45 Boinc-client ;-)

You can help me to understand this 'Trux thing' by telling me the exact specs (if they are OC or not) of your 2 Pentium4 3Ghz host - so I can compare these with my own P4's (2,8 - 3,2 and 3,4Ghz).

Each of your two P4 3Ghz is having almost double RAC than my Prescott 3,2@3,7Ghz (s.478) and mine is cruncing WU's at 100% 24/7.
(and crunching a 4.18 reference WU in 4311 seconds as seen here (rated second): [url=http://www.marisan.nl/seti/reference.htm]

Kiva

The three top machines I'm running are (2) dual core Pentium D (Pressler core) 920s, running at or over 4ghz on air cooling and 1 930, liquid cooled, running at 4.06ghz. All 3 user the Asus p5wd2 series motherboards (Intel 955x chipset) The memory is running at the equivilent of DDR2-850 or higher on all machines. All use (used) Crunch3r's optimized SSE3 client v 4.11 and the Trux calibrating client, and crunch the old 4.18 wus between 18 and 19.5 minutes each for mid-ar wus.

What I've found is that non-intel chipsets are significantly slower in crunching than the 945x and 955x chipsets. Socket 478 cpus are significantly slower than socket 775 counterparts, especially when using said intel chipsets and DDR2 memory with the socket 775s.

For example, I had an 630 (3ghz) running in an ATI based chipset board with DDR-400 memory that took over an hour optimized to crunch a wu. Upgrding to a 945 chipset and DDR2-533, and pushing the overclocking a bit more took the times that processor ran to below 35 minutes/wu.

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XaaK

The three top machines I'm running are (2) dual core Pentium D (Pressler core) 920s, running at or over 4ghz on air cooling and 1 930, liquid cooled, running at 4.06ghz. All 3 user the Asus p5wd2 series motherboards (Intel 955x chipset) The memory is running at the equivilent of DDR2-850 or higher on all machines. All use (used) Crunch3r's optimized SSE3 client v 4.11 and the Trux calibrating client, and crunch the old 4.18 wus between 18 and 19.5 minutes each for mid-ar wus.

What I've found is that non-intel chipsets are significantly slower in crunching than the 945x and 955x chipsets. Socket 478 cpus are significantly slower than socket 775 counterparts, especially when using said intel chipsets and DDR2 memory with the socket 775s.

For example, I had an 630 (3ghz) running in an ATI based chipset board with DDR-400 memory that took over an hour optimized to crunch a wu. Upgrding to a 945 chipset and DDR2-533, and pushing the overclocking a bit more took the times that processor ran to below 35 minutes/wu.

Thats quite an impressive list of hardware ;)

I can only think that either FSB speeds or the larger bandwidth of DDR2 memory might be the reason. I don't know how SE is programmed to use instruction sets, but if the program gets loaded in it's entirety into memory, than any board using DDR2 would benefit. Even though the memory timing is a tad higher than DDR, it can shove alot more data across the FSB to the CPU. And if you have gobs of memory (2Gb) then wouldn't the application favor it rather than the slower swap file?

In any case, congrats on a killer system. I remember when my 925X board was cutting edge, but that was rapidly displaced by the 945,955 and 975 Chipsets.

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I realized the dead-end roads I ended up taking weren't always my fault. Many thanks to all that have helped in this - and you know who you are.
TheBeatenPath

hi all not to be a dumb ass but whats all the fuss over the the damn credit if some one would be so kind as to clue me in i would appreciate it very much

thnx geo

Some people take it VERY personally and seriously. They set up entire farms of machines, pay very close attention to how much credit they earn, use optimized BOINC clients and application workers, and monitor their "competition" closely.

Personally, I don't have time to devote that much energy to it. I set it up to be as efficient as possible and let it run.

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as one of the other 99% of the world i would just like to say that i have been following the enhanced threads on all of the project sites but as yet have not bothered to use one .

i can understand that people who are using optimised apps are "loseing" credits

BUT if a FASTER machine crunches a w/u in 5 hours and clame 30 credits
and i crunch the same w/u in 10 hours and claim 30 credits they still have 5 hours in which to finish another w/u and claim another 30 credits
meaning that they will outpace me very quiickly
and if i want to keep up with them then i will have to spend money and upgrade to a faster machine

i have always thought that the size of a w/u should be the defining factor of a credit system as opposed to a timed one (less chance of anyone "fiddling" the credit system)i.e everyone gets the same credit for crunching the same w/u irrispective of time taken (can`t say fairer than that can you )
faster machines will STILL CRUNCH faster
i also think that if all projects could go to this credit system then a very level playing field would be had (also this way people would not just crunch for the highest granting projects )meaning more users for the projects

i agree that credit is nice to show how much work you have done (and i am quite happy with mine thank you )
and the apps that acually made the machine FASTER are fair enough but the ones that just multiplied claimed credits(i beleive that there are some please let me know if i am wrong ) i think are not so fair
why should someone claim more credit than me when we took the same TIME to crunch a w/u
i also have no trouble with overclocking as this makes the machine FASTER and there for if i want to keep up with you again i know what to do



just my thoughts NOT slagging anyone off

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Hi Daniel,

The effect of this being that those people who have spent an enormous amount of money and time on building a farm of the fastest crunchers, that do the MOST SCIENCE are, in effect, being PUNISHED for doing so. This is how we feel, as if we're being punished for doing the most work, in the most efficient mannor.

I hope you don't consider this to be punishment. It certainly not meant to be. We are not deliberately reducing the credit of optimizers.

Consider this alternative scenario. Suppose that instead of creating the enhanced client and modifying the credit scheme we had just started distributing one of Cruncher's optimized versions. Would you have considered that to be unfair to people already using optimized apps?

The end result on the recent average credit of those already using the optimized version would have been much the same as with enhanced. People (not running a Trux BOINC client) would have started requesting less credit because their workunits would have finished much faster. Everyone who was already running an optimized client would see their recent average credit plummet by even more than has happened with enhanced.

In other words, would it be unfair to people running optimized versions if everyone started using an optimized version?

Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

Hi Eric,

what's your position w.r.t to further possible optimisations of the enhanced app - Should I consider the current credit scheme as stable?

I might post some patches during the next weeks, but I don't want to cause further grief by triggering another adjustment.


Regards Hans

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what's your position w.r.t to further possible optimisations of the enhanced app - Should I consider the current credit scheme as stable?

Hi Hans,

The current credit scheme should be considered stable. It'll be at least a month before I could consider a revision either upward or downward. Such a revision would likely be small (<10%).
Eric

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@SETIEric@qoto.org (Mastodon)

@Zaak

Hi Zaak,

Thx - but I wasn't interested in the specs of your impressive Pentium D farm - but interested in the specs regarding your two 'slowest' host which are listed as Pentium 4(four) 3.00Ghz in your profile. ;-)

These two Pentium 4 (four not D) should be comparable with my own three Pentium 4's - if you will give me those the specs?
I will then be able to see how much this Trux has to say ;-)

Kiva

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Greetings from Norway

Crunch3er & AK-V8 Inside

Bump

Hans Graph is showing the "overall" granting of credit... This over time may show what is more "real."

Hi Eric, thanks for clearing things up.

There's a nice graph at Team OcUK, showing total stats for seti@home.

There has been no significant change in the last days:



Regards Hans

While I have seen a negative trend, I know that quorum's and granting credit have been cyclic (individually)... Meaning while some are "down" others are "up"... This is because of "benchmark" based Core Client and Applications...

So as Seti Enhanced was about to release, I move machines from there to here to help with determining the credit varience... with 4.18 saw an increase due to the added computers and then a decrease while waiting for the 5.12's to get through the quorum... People aborting/stopping continued to add to the decrease in RAC, not to mention the 4.xx Core clients taht do not understand Fpops...

Currently as things go, I am seeing a positive trend on Granted Credits... Personally I would not expect to see any significant numbers until two weeks after all the splitters went to 5.12 only...

Pappa

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